Tag Archive: Apple Watch

Hours ahead of Apple’s major iPhone event, in which the company is widely expected to launch the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and the iPhone X, its partner Qualcomm has stirred controversy by saying that Android smartphone makers are always first to bring new cutting technology feature to their products.

Qualcomm has shared more than 20 examples to make the case for how Android smartphone makers have been the first ones to introduce new features. Some of those examples include – fingerprint under display (Qualcomm Reference Design Handset), bezel-less design (first introduced in Xiaomi Mi Mix from last year), OLED Display (LG Flex 2) and Facial Recognition (Samsung Galaxy S8). Interestingly these all features are expected to be selling points of Apple’s supposedly upcoming iPhone models that the company would unveil later today. Other notable mentions are Gigabit LTE (Samsung Galaxy S8) and Bluetooth v5.0 (everything running the Snapdragon 835 SoC).

The telecom giant’s brutal blog post comes months after both of them have sued each other in global patent licensing dispute. Earlier this year, Apple sued the chipmaker for roughly $1 billion claiming that Qualcomm has been “charging royalties for technologies they have nothing to do with.” At the time, Qualcomm dismissed Apple’s accusation. But months later, it filed a lawsuit against Apple, asking the US trade regulators to ban iPhone imports, as they allegedly infringe on six patents. The patents, owned by Qualcomm, provide technology to improve battery life, Qualcomm said.

Meanwhile, on the blog post published on Monday, Francisco Cheng, director of technical marketing said it has “enabled some notable world firsts on Android, and some remain Android exclusives to this day. […] Inventions from Qualcomm lay the foundation for so many technologies and experiences we value in our smartphones today — on Android and other platforms.”

Apple would certainly not appreciate Qualcomm’s constant commentary on how rival products are better, especially on the day when it plans to launch its own flagship iPhone models.

“I am looking at India holistically and we are here for the next thousand years,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said on Friday, adding that he instantly feels like he belongs here in India.

In an interview given to the news channel NDTV, Cook said: “India is much more strategic. We are thinking about a really long innings in the country. We are here for next thousand years. We are not making the most but the best. We will never make a product that we are not proud of.”

“Apple has a bright future for retail in India. We will sell pre-owned phones with new warranty,” he added.

When asked about China, Cook said: “India is different than China,” adding that the announcement about Apps development facility in Bengaluru and Maps Development Centre in Hyderabad were just the beginning.

Speaking on the importance of 4G, he said that “you will see a reliable signal quality after 4G which is critical for India’s progress”.

“We are planning to bring Apple Pay to India,” he added. Apple Pay is a mobile payment and digital wallet service that lets users make payments through Apple devices.

“There is nothing like having customers telling neighbours you should buy Apple products. Word of mouth is the best marketing,” Cook observed.

Earlier, Cook who arrived in New Delhi after watching an Indian Premier League (IPL) match in Kanpur on Thursday, began the Delhi leg of his four-day India visit with a call at his corporate office where he was greeted by Apple India employees.

“I went to one store in the morning and I was very happy what I had seen there,” he told NDTV.

Cook watched the IPL match between Gujarat Lions and Kolkata Knight Riders at Kanpur on Thursday. He arrived at the Green Park stadium on the invitation of IPL chairman and Congress leader Rajeev Shukla.

The atmosphere at the IPL match, Cook said, was “exciting”.

“It’s tough to watch in this heat. But it’s exciting to watch cricket,” he told IPL’s official broadcaster Sony Six channel during an interview at the ground.

Talking about his overall experience being in India, Cook said: “It’s hugely important and the talent here is incredible. It’s unbelievable being here.”

Apple on Friday made an announcement to developers where it demanded all new watchOS apps submitted to the App Store from June 1 will have to be native apps.

The Cupertino-based giant on its developer site said, “Starting June 1, 2016, all new watchOS apps submitted to the App Store must be native apps built with the watchOS 2 SDK (software development kit) or later.”

Notably, one of the biggest reasons to shift to native apps built with Apple’s watchOS 2 SDK is to eliminate performance problems such as lag. Most third-party apps on Apple Watch rely on the companion app on the iPhone to do all processing and then show the results on the wearable app. This meant several third-party apps worked rather slowly.

To recall, watchOS 2 was announced in June last year and was available to users in September. watchOS 2 was touted to make “apps faster and more fluid” by running natively on the Apple Watch. The company had revealed new watch faces alongside announcing ability for third-party apps to display information on the watch face as complications.

The watchOS 2 was claimed by Apple to be the “first major software update for Apple Watch,” and brought ways to customise new watch faces including Photo, Photo Album, and Time-Lapse.

Some of the other features that watchOS 2 introduced include new communication features such as the ability to respond via Mail with dictation, smart replies or emoji, and Digital Touch which offered more creativity with multiple sketch colours.

Apple had back in March released watchOS 2.2, which alongside iOS 9.3 brought support for pairing multiple Apple Watches with a single iPhone. The update also brought the Nearby feature in the Maps section, allowing users to locate points of interest. watchOS 2.2 also brought an enhanced glance feature.

The native app announcement to developers is interesting considering that Apple will hold its annual worldwide developers conference (popularly called WWDC) in San Francisco starting June 13. We can expect the company to make some major announcement regarding the watchOS of the Apple Watch alongside other announcements on software platforms for iPhones, Macintosh, and Internet-enabled televisions.

An analyst recently claimed that Apple may refresh the Apple Watch in June at its annual developer conference – WWDC.

Most iPhone and iPad users, if not all, have a folder on their home screen that reads something like this: “Apple apps,” “junk,” or “useless.” This folder usually contains Apple-made stock apps such as Compass, Calculator, Stocks, Find my iPhone, Voice Memos, Apple Watch, and Weather. For years, Apple has been criticised for not giving users the ability to remove or hide these stock apps, and it appears, the company plans to give its customers some flexibility with the next version of iOS.

Folks at AppAdvice looked into the metadata of iTunes app to find a few strings of characters that suggest that Apple is going to allow users to hide apps very soon. The strings, according to AppAdvice, reads “isFirstParty,” and “isFirstPartyHideableApp,” and seems to be appearing on every app in the App Store.

It’s a welcome move – provided it does happen – because plenty of users are not really happy allocating the previous home screen real estate to some of Apple’s pre-installed stock apps that they hardly ever use. Furthermore, for a user with a 16GB storage variant of an iPhone or iPad, these apps can eat up a significant amount of available storage. The blog claims that currently the value is set to “false,” but with WWDC around the corner, Apple may make the needful changes to give its users the ability to hide the apps.

In an interview last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook told BuzzFeed News that the company is aware that not all of its users are big fans of the apps that it ships with its devices, but added the complexities that are in play here before it could even think about giving its users the option to remove apps. Cook said, “There are some apps that are linked to something else on the iPhone. If they were to be removed they might cause issues elsewhere on the phone. There are other apps that aren’t like that. So over time, I think with the ones that aren’t like that, we’ll figure out a way [for you to remove them].”

At its ‘Let Us Loop You In’ event in Cupertino, San Francisco, Apple announced that it is making it cheaper to purchase the Apple Watch.

The company’s first wearable now starts at $299 (roughly Rs. 20,500), down from $349 (roughly Rs. 23,200) Apple also unveiled new bands for the Apple Watch.

As expected, Apple isn’t launching a new Apple Watch, that is expected to come later this year. The company, however, has new bands for your Apple Watch.

There are a number of new Apple Watch Sport Bands and Leather Bands that come with new colours. Also new are Woven Nylon bands that feature a four-layer construction. They are priced at $49. Apple also introduced a Space-Black Milanese loop, which is priced at $199 – or $50 more than the Silver Milanese loop.

At the event, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that changing bands is a popular trend amongst Apple Watch users, and that about a third of them regularly changed their bands. He also claimed that the Apple Watch is the best selling smartwatch in the world.

To recall, the Apple Watch launched on April 24 in very select regions across the world. The company slowly widened availability, and brought the Apple Watch to India in November last year.

Apple is holding a special event on Monday, where the company is expected to showcase the 4-inch iPhone SE, a 9.7-inch iPad Pro model, and a range of new Apple Watch models alongside more accessories. A flurry of leaks related to Apple’s new iPhone has already given us a glimpse of what to expect from the launch event.

Just ahead of the big unveil on Monday, the Apple Store has gone down – a standard practice the company maintains to update the site with the newest products soon after the launch.

An alleged retail box of the new iPhone all but confirmed the iPhone SE name and also tipped the base storage is set to continue as 16GB. The phone is also tipped to come with 4K recording. A recent video also showed the purported iPhone SE in all its glory. The design in the video mostly corroborates previous leaks. The model in the video is a Rose Gold version and is seen compared side-by-side along with the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 6s. As one would expect, the model looks similar to the iPhone 6 and later models, but with the iPhone 5s dimensions.
Rumours of a 4-inch iPhone have been floating around ever since the company unveiled the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, Apple smartphones that for the first time featured display sizes larger than 4-inches. Based on preliminary leaks, the new iPhone will look like the iPhone 5s unveiled back in 2013.

About the name of the upcoming iPhone, several earlier reports referred it as the iPhone 5se, though that wouldn’t make much sense if you question why Apple would use a name based on its 2013 iPhone model. The Cupertino-based giant is likely to launch a 4-inch iPhone dubbed as iPhone SE or special edition.

As for the price, analyst Ming Chi Kuo at KGI Securities claims the iPhone SE will be priced between $400-$500 (roughly between Rs. 27,500 and 34,500, which is lower than the off-contract retail price of the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6s. Reports also claim that Apple might slash the official retail price of the iPhone 5s in half at the event.

The alleged new iPhone is rumoured to sport innards similar to the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s. But in terms of the design, it is expected that Apple will be inclined towards the design of the iPhone 5s, but with some noticeable changes – such as a relocated power button. The iPhone SE is said to sport its power button on the side, as opposed to on the top as seen in the iPhone 5s.

To recall, iPhone models starting with iPhone 6 have had their power key on the side. The report thus refutes a purported iPhone 5se render that suggested that the iPhone 5se will look identical to the iPhone 6, except for the 4-inch size form-factor. Further, the iPhone SE is said to have curved design. Some reports have claimed that the iPhone SE will sport a curved glass as previously seen on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s smartphones.

For specifications, the iPhone SE is expected to feature a 4-inch display and will be powered by A9 SoC and M9 coprocessor. It is also likely to feature hardware and software capability to support Live Photos, a feature that Apple introduced with iOS 9 last year. Currently only the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus support Live Photos. As for connectivity features, the iPhone SE will support 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, and VoLTE, as seen on the iPhone 6s. There have been reports claiming that the iPhone SE will miss out on 3D Touch display, which is one of the most interesting features in Apple’s current flagship smartphone models.

The iPhone SE, according to reports, will have NFC chip to facilitate support for Apple Pay, the mobile payments system from Apple. It will come in Gold, Silver, and Space Grey colour options and in 16GB and 64GB inbuilt storage variants. An earlier report suggested that Apple may bring a Rose Gold option identical to the iPhone 6’s Rose Gold colour.

In other news, the much-rumoured iPhone SE will have Foxconn as well as Wistron as suppliers. A Digitimes report says that Apple has been considering separating its order to different ODMs to “avoid risks.” Wistron is said to get small portion of the 4-inch iPhone orders from Apple this year.

At the event, we are also likely to see a new iPad model. The tablet, according to a report from last week, will be very similar to the iPad Pro with same hardware innards and an Apple Pencil, save for the 9.7-inch small factor. The iPhone maker is also expected to release the WatchOS 2.2 software update, which was recently made available to developers, alongside the launch of new Apple Watch models.

In the meanwhile, there have been more details leaked about the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro, including storage options and pricing. According to a report, the upcoming iPad Pro will be Apple’s first tablet featuring a 9.7-inch display whose starting price is more than $499 (approximately Rs. 33,000). The 9.7-inch iPad Pro Wi-Fi only model will start at a price of $599 (approximately Rs. 40,000) and will pack 32GB of storage. The report adds that there will be a “higher-priced” 128GB model with LTE connectivity as well.
Source : (gadgets.ndtv.com)

The upcoming iPad model that Apple is reportedly planning to launch on March 15, may not be called the iPad Air 3, as previously speculated. A new report claims that the tablet will likely be a smaller variant of the iPad Pro, the 12-inch tablet that Apple launched last year.

It appears Apple is ditching the “Air” brand from its iPad lineup. The company, which launched the iPad Air 2 in 2014, will launch a tablet with same innards as the iPad Pro but in a 9.7-inch small form factor, reports 9to5Mac.

The report reiterates the specifications for the upcoming iPad Pro as 9.7-inch display presumably with the same 2732×2048 pixels screen resolution. The 9.7-inch iPad Pro will supposedly have A9X SoC, same as the original iPad Pro, and 4GB of RAM, as well as house a four-speaker setup.

The upcoming iPad Pro will also reportedly support the Apple Pencil stylus accessory, and have Smart Connector. The report claims that Apple is working on a smaller variant of the Smart Keyboard. The retail price of the new, smaller iPad Pro, as per the report, could be in the same range as the iPad Air 2.

Reports claim that Apple will launch this tablet alongside the 4-inch iPhone 5se on March 15. The Cupertino-based company is also planning to launch new models and bands for its Apple Watch. Interestingly a report on a South Korean blog claims that Apple will hold the event on March 22 instead of March 15. Apple is expected to send out invites in the coming days.

The global market for connected wearable devices accelerated at the end of 2015, with Fitbit pacing the leaders and Apple closing ground, a survey showed Tuesday.

The IDC survey found fourth quarter sales of wearables such as fitness trackers and smartwatches surged 126.9 percent compared with a year earlier, with 27.4 million units.

For the full year, sales of wearables sales were up 171.6 percent at 78.1 million devices.

The jump in sales shows “that wearables are not just for the technophiles and early adopters, wearables can exist and are welcome in the mass market,” said IDC’s Ramon Llamas.

“And since wearables have yet to fully penetrate the mass market, there is still plenty of room for growth in multiple vectors: new vendors, form factors, applications, and use cases. This will help propel the market further.”

Market leader Fitbit sold 8.1 million units in the fourth quarter, for a 29.5 percent share, IDC said.

Even though Fitbit sales grew more than 50 percent, its leadership is under assault from other vendors, notably Apple and Chinese maker Xiaomi.

Apple has not publicly released sales figures for its Apple Watch, but IDC estimated the company sold 4.1 million in the fourth quarter and 11.6 million for the year. That gave the California giant a market share of around 15 percent for both periods, even though its smartwatch sales began in June.

Xiaomi was number three for the final quarter of the year with sales of 2.7 million units and a market sahre of 9.7 percent, paced by sales growth of 258 percent.

For the full year, Xiaomi held the number two spot, with a 15.4 percent share, paced by sales of its fitness tracker selling for as little as $11.

Among the other major vendors, Samsung was number four for the past quarter with a 4.9 percent share and Garmin fifth with 3.5 percent.

IDC’s Jitesh Ubrani said he sees newer devices coming into the wearables market, with “fashion and design” playing a key role.

“The wearables market isn’t just about smartwatches and fitness bands,” he said.

“Though the top five certainly dominate with wrist-worn devices, there’s been an immense amount of growth in other form factors like clothing, footwear, and eyewear form factors that arguably require even more fashion sense than watches or bands.”

Apple is getting serious about India. The iPhone maker sees the country as one of the most important growth areas, Tim Cook, company’s chief executive was cited as saying. Cook also confirmed that Apple is in early stages to bring its official retail stores in India.

As Apple worries of slowing growth in its main markets, the Cupertino-based giant is reportedly focusing its attention to emerging regions such as India. In a town hall meeting at the company’s campus, Tim Cook shared with employees the importance of India, reports 9to5Mac.

Tim Cook said that 4G LTE networks are still not widely available in every emerging market, and Apple sees it as an opportunity to push its products to such regions. The state of 4G LTE penetration, performance, and coverage in the country is still in the nascent stage, as also seen in OpenSignal’s recent global LTE report.

Cook also confirmed that Apple will be opening retail stores in India. Last month, it was found that the company had applied to set up its own stores in the country – something the company itself later confirmed. As of now, Apple sells its iPhone, iPad, Mac, and other products through third-party resellers in the country.

Reports claim that Apple representatives have held talks with Indian governments officials about a relaxation of the 30 percent local-sourcing rule. It is also believed that Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States, in which he met several top Silicon Valley executives including Cook, may have played an instrumental role in Apple’s growing focus in the country.

Talking about other topics, Cook noted that both Apple TV and Apple Watch have been selling well. He said that Apple Watch was one of the hottest product last quarter, whereas the company has never sold as many Apple TV before. He also said that employees will be moving to the company’s new Cupertino Apple Campus 2 by the end of January 2017.

Cook also talked about Apple Music for Android. The company’s decision to bring its product to rival Google’s platform has become a talking point in the industry. Cook said that with the Android app, the company is testing the waters for expanding its services on other platforms. This would, the report adds, open up the door for more porting in the future.

Apple will hold its first event of this year on March 15, multiple reports claim. The company is expected to launch its rumoured 4-inch iPhone 5se and the iPad Air 3 at the event. The Cupertino-based company will also utilise the show to launch new models and bands of the Apple Watch.

People craving for a 4-inch smartphone from Apple will finally get the iPhone they want at the March event, 9to5Mac reports, in the form of the iPhone 5se. The anticipated iPad Air 3, the successor to the company’s iPad Air 2, will also be launched at what is being said to be a small affair event, reported BuzzFeed News corroborating 9to5Mac’s report.

The iPhone 5se is said to house hardware guts and design similar to the iPhone 6s. Earlier reports claim that the iPhone 5se will be powered by A9 SoC coupled with M9 coprocessor, as previously seen on the iPhone 6s. The iPhone 5se will reportedly also support always-on Siri feature. Other features of the iPhone 5se include 16GB and 64GB inbuilt storage options, an 8-megapixel iSight camera, and a 5-megapixel FaceTime camera.

The iPad Air 3, reports claim, will have a 4K display sans 3D Touch capability. A leaked case of the iPad Air 3 suggests that the upcoming tablet will have a four-speaker setup and Smart Connector, two features previously seen on the iPad Pro. The case also suggests that the iPad Air 3 will be 0.05mm thicker than the iPad Air 2, and 0.1mm wider.

Apple also plans to launch new Apple Watch models at the event. This won’t be a major improvement to the company’s first wearable, do note, as the Apple Watch 2 with major improvements is expected to launch in September alongside the iPhone 7. The company, however, plans to launch a range of new band colour options, including new bands from Hermes, a French company that produces fashion-centric luxury accessories. Unlike the previous bands from Hermes, the new bands are expected to be made of new materials.